


A Beautiful Lie

by Killer_Rabbit_of_Caerbannog



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Extended Universe, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Justice League (2017)
Genre: Clark isn't in his right mind, Good ol' Interplay of Sex and Violence, Mild Gore, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Clark Kent/Diana, Minor Clark Kent/Lois Lane, Multi, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-12 02:57:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19939093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killer_Rabbit_of_Caerbannog/pseuds/Killer_Rabbit_of_Caerbannog
Summary: 'Pet Sematary' Barry had said, and Clark wonders if he'd somehow been right about that and he'd come back to life... wrong. False memories tangle with whispers in his head, a blood-filled perfect future Darkseid promises him, and through it all Clark tries to remember that in this world, his world, he doesn't know what Bruce Wayne's kisses taste like.





	1. Day of the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Alrighty-roo, this is my first go at a bigbang, so a big thank you to the wonderful mods and my awesome artist for making this such a great event.
> 
> As usual I couldn't write Superman without making him psychotic because I just had to obsess over the Nightmare. I'm just a sucker for dictator Superman. And then I replayed Injustice and got sidetracked because I adore the games and comics and the ending with Brainiac and Batsy is right up my alley, so here we are with a weirdo blending of the two.
> 
> Thank you so much to the wonderful JolBalrok [for the amazing artwork](https://jolbalrok.tumblr.com/post/186491649360/), it is beautiful and everyone should check it out.

“What was it like?” Lois asks him in the darkness of his bedroom, curled on top of the sheets. “While you were… gone.”

Clark traces her hands, stroking up her arm to the soft skin in the dip of her elbow, feels the heartbeat sure and steady beneath his fingertips. “Like I was sleeping,” he replies, catching the quiet hitch of her breath.

“That doesn’t sound so bad then,” she says wryly, voice only cracking once.

He smiles, twines their fingers together, and doesn’t say all the ugly things in his head.

It’s what he tells Ma, that it was easy, just like he was asleep and now he’s awake. He tells them that it was exactly like being asleep, and they never think to wonder why he says that. Fading into darkness with the pain of Doomsday’s bone tearing through his chest, a sweet counterpoint to Lois’ soft hands cradling his face. Dying is as easy as falling asleep, Clark thinks, until he wakes up.

He wakes up into a dream. And then he wakes up again. And again. An endless parade of dreams.

This time, it is such a sweet dream, a beautiful dream - Lois cupping his face softly, her gentle words guiding him away from the row of familiar faces twisted in fear and distrust.

She is his world, and she tells him this is real, so he tries to believe it one more time as his mother runs across the lawn into his waiting arms and envelopes him in a hug that smells of sunlight. Lois has a smudge of dirt on her cheek, and the rims of her eyes are red, like she’s been crying. There is no wedding ring on her finger, just a band with a single stone. Clark stares at it as Ma pulls away with a hiccupping laugh, startles with Lois reaches for him with that same hand, the stone catching the setting sun to flash a pure white.

The engagement ring.

It looks strange on her finger, naked without the familiar golden wedding band next to it. He makes himself smile at Lois’ questioning look, and when the whispers begin pressing against his skull, he focuses on the familiar presence of the Kent house, filling his senses to drown the thoughts out as Ma leads him inside and Lois toes off her heels at the door. He loses himself in every sight, every sound and familiar smell until the dream feels a little more real. They talk and he sits and listens, lets their voices wash over him, ground him, until the screams fade in his ears and the world stops being too large, too full of agony and violence that he _should_ be stopping right now as their leader, their Lord – but no, he focuses on _them_ , on Lois and Ma, the two people he lives for in this too wide of a world, until he can remember what it means to be Clark Kent again.

He’s glad when Lois follows him upstairs without a word as night falls, curling around him on his old bed and stroking her thumb over his skin. With her here, solid and within reach, he can forget. Each touch erases the remembered pain, the bitter loneliness, until his head swims with Lois. He stretches, presses a soft kiss to her worried lips as he settles on the bed, sliding his hands into the cool underside of his pillow like he did as a child. He lets himself close his eyes only when he carefully digs a thumbnail into his palm until blood wets his fingers, the pain chasing any chance at sleep from his body. Lois whispers to him softly, tales about her work since he’d been gone, what Perry had said the other day, how the recent Wayne fundraiser had gone, and Clark lets himself relax, digging his thumb into his flesh when he begins to feel the press of sleep creep in. Not yet, he won’t lose this dream yet.

The agony of the other dreams, all the horrors in it – they were difficult, but Clark will pretend and pretend until they faded into nothingness like all dreams do. He had lost so much in the other dreams, and in the here and now he has everything he lost sitting in front of him happy and whole. So he will force himself to forget.

Ma makes waffles with all the toppings just like she always used to on his birthdays, and Lois, grinning, plucks slices of strawberry from his plate. Clark tries to grin back at her but Ma’s lilting hum echoes in his head, a half-remembered lullaby with a whispered promise of life amongst the stars. He knows that that lullaby only he’s sure it belongs to someone else’s voice. His other mother’s voice. In the dreams he knew Lara, but here he is sure he has never met her. Here, he’s never heard her soft voice and gentle laugh, has never been folded into her warm hugs and drifted to sleep to her lullabies. In the dreams, he had her and Jor-El both, had known Krypton, had saved it, seen it burn, ruled it, destroyed it, a thousand different endings. He breathes slowly until his eyes no longer sting and Lois brushes away the tears clinging to his lashes without a word. It was just a dream, he tells himself. He tries to focus through the clamouring buzzing in his head. _Just a dream_ , a sneering voice echoes, and Clark drives his thumb into the soft flesh of his palm.

The steady drumming of rain on the roof drowns out the rest of the world, creates a space for only himself and those he loves, the familiar earthy scent of his family home, the sound of Ma’s throaty laughter, the feeling of Lois’ hair brushing against his arm – all of it grounds him, keeps him from spiralling out of himself. He is Clark Joseph Kent, Kal-El, the last son of Krypton. He is himself.

The buzzing grows louder.

“Strawberry or maple syrup, sweetheart?” Ma asks, “The usual or do you want to change things up today?”

Clark turns towards the head of the table with a grin and a wink at Jon.

The chair is empty.

He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood, blinks away the ghostly imprints that flicker behind his eyelids.

Of course the chair is empty.

“Strawberry,” he says, forcing the smile onto his lips.

“Da- _ad_ , don’t be a total barbarian. It’s maple all the way!”

“Thanks, Ma,” Clark says, carefully keeping his eyes on his mother. It’s a memory, a dream, and when he dares to look again, the chair is still empty.

Of course it is. Jon Lane-Kent isn’t real. He’s not. Clark is 95% sure he’s not.

Diana Prince turns up on his doorstep in a pale blue cashmere jacket and the papers declaring him legally alive.

“It is good to see you’re doing well,” she greets him warmly.

He blinks in surprise at the brilliance of her smile, unprepared for the sight of her when he can still hear Lois’ voice murmuring on the phone from the back porch. But even with Lois and her sweet scent still clinging to his skin, he doesn’t move away when Diana steps in close to press a hand to his arm in careful greeting. Her light touch sends a rush of longing through him, hands coming up the press against her back without a thought, pulling her closer as he tilts his head towards hers until his lips brush against the corner of her mouth.

She immediately steps away, eyes guarded, flickering over him cautiously. He frowns, hands still held aloft as she deliberately moves from the circle of his arms. Clark blinks slowly, confused at what he’s done to anger her, wondering if this was still over Kara letting the Bat go free from their encounter last week. He reaches for Diana’s shoulder, meaning to run a reassuring hand down her arm, but she calmly wraps her long fingers around his wrist and slowly, calculatingly, moves his hand away from her before he can touch, his wrist creaking under the relentless pressure of her hand. Diana’s brown eyes darken as they flicker over his face, other hand twitching towards her shoulder for a sword that isn’t there.

“Are you alright?” she says softly, and the gentle worry in her voice has him pressing a hand to his eyes as the world tips, spinning into a blur of colour as the buzzing turns deafening in his head.

He blinks hard, blood rushing in his ears, buzzing like a swarm of bees, like an explosion, like an endless wailing siren that drowns everything out, and he unthinkingly reaches out for her once again. Diana shifts back from his outstretched hand, mouth pressed into a tight line, eyes turning sharp and deadly dark. He freezes, uncertain at her distance, the wariness in her eyes. Since when has she been afraid of him? Has the Bat gotten to her too as it seemed he had to Kara, whispered poisonous lies into her ears until even his steadfast Amazonian princess looks at him and sees a tyrant? A monster? Surely this was the Bat’s doing, taking everything away from him _again_. His hands curl into a fist, vision threading with red.

“Kal-El?” she murmurs, and the world rights itself with a snap, silence settling in his head again.

Clark smiles, dropping his hands and twisting to gesture her into the house. “Sorry about that, bit of a head rush,” he lies, but mercifully Diana doesn’t say a word, although her eyes are wary, no longer full of that easy warmth.

She steps past him, and Clark reminds himself with a single word. ‘Kal-El’, she’d said, because here he wasn’t her Clark, here he was nothing to her but an alien, an ally only briefly against Doomsday. He reminds himself that it was only a dream and tries to forget that the touch of her lips on his skin feels no different from his memories. Because his memories are not real. It was just a dream.

The mantra feels stale already.

It is surreal seeing Diana sitting on his mother’s worn sofa, a goddess amongst the weeds. At the stray unkind thought, Clark slips a hand up his sleeve and carefully digs his nails in hard until warmth wets his fingers and the pain fills his head. Diana pauses, folder in hand, her clever eyes not missing a thing, before carefully laying it on the table. Part of Clark wants her to ask, so he can tell her everything and let her hold him close and promise bloody revenge on their enemies, just like before. Part of him sings at the thought, thrills at the promise of blood. He sinks onto the couch carefully, looks at her with the practised mild smile of Clark Kent the Reporter, the harmless, unassuming farm boy, and wonders when it was that he got so good at pretending to be somebody else. _Accomplished little liar, aren’t you?_ the voice in his head croons. _So ready to manipulate others into believing what_ you _want them to. So ready to feed them false truths._

“Is this for me?” he asks, tapping a finger on the manila folder. “A ‘Welcome Back’ gift, or would that be a little too on the nose?” He winces, trying to temper his voice into something friendly, less playful. He cannot flirt with this Diana, this stranger.

“You may call it a gift if you like, although I do not think paperwork is the best choice in presents. Luckily, it was not so difficult to bring you back legally as it was to actually resurrect you,” she jokes, mouth curving into a sly smile. Her lips are a perfect shade of red, the kind that leaves bright smears around champagne flutes, smudges against a dress collar accompanied by dark, inviting laughter. Her lipstick is a paint splashed across the Tower, painting it like a brand, claiming the Tower, claiming _him_. Tangled in the sheets and her hands like a vice, anchoring him to her, promising to never leave him as she claws red marks down his spine.

Clark fumbles for a pen as the image presses against the back of his eyelids, a mess of memories too tangled for him to unravel, but in his unease he forgets to hide his hand too late. Diana’s eyes lock onto his bloodied fingertips, but once again she doesn’t say a word, handing over her fountain pen as he scrambles to wipe his hands.

“You are very quiet,” she says as he begins to sign.

Clark winces. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude, aren’t I?”

She tilts her head. “That is not what I meant. Your mother says you are coping well since you have returned. That you are as you were. I do not believe her.”

Warmth trickles down his wrist. “What gave it away?” he sneers, holding out his bloodied fingers. The words press against his skull, a cruel relish that fills him with pleasure and blessed emptiness, and he hurriedly focuses on the distant sounds of his mother’s footsteps in the backyard. The memory, the dream, fades to a quiet hum in his head. He is not that man. He is not a god or a tyrant. He is Clark Joseph Kent, and he hasn’t become the monster Lex Luthor always said he was. _Yet,_ the dark voice echoes with derisive laughter. The word echoes in his skull. He clenches his fist until blood drips from his hand.

Slowly, giving him plenty of time to pull away, Diana reaches for him. He shouldn’t let her touch him, this achingly familiar stranger, not while the dream’s memories are clamouring inside him. But selfishly he yearns for her, unable to help himself shivering in relief as her hands slide around his, gently stroking his fingers until they relax. He opens his hands, watches Diana dab away the blood with the edge of her sleeve, seemingly uncaring of dirting her expensive suit. The blood smears from his fingers, leaving a red stain on her nails. She doesn’t seem to notice. _She never did mind how messy they got_ , Clark thinks absently.

“It was never meant to be easy,” Diana murmurs. “Bruce, he… _we_ knew this. But what we did was our choice, our burden, and if you are suffering the consequences of our actions? Then we will fix it. Together.” She cups her hands around his, and for a brief moment, the buzzing in his head quiets, a feeling of serenity that he’d thought long gone as they lace their fingers together. He can’t help the grin that splits his face, pleased when Diana’s face smooths with an answering smile. She squeezes his hand encouragingly. “You do not have to carry this burden alone, Kal-El.”

At once, the serenity vanishes at _that_ name on her lips.

“I have Ma and Lois,” he protests, trying to pull his hands away.

Her grip tightens.

He looks up into her face, the warning in her eyes mixed with a familiar concern, a soft worried look, but Diana – the _real_ Diana – knew better than to try and control him. The grip on his wrists constricts into a sharp vice as red begins to thread across his vision. He wonders how long it would take under the heat of his eyes before her skin bubbled and melted away. Or perhaps she’d crack, shatter into a thousand tiny shards, if the stories of clay babies had any merit.

“Let go of me before I make you,” he says, far more calmly than he feels. He’s watched her fight a thousand times, knows her strengths, her weaknesses. After Bruce, after Kara, he knows better than to trust even his closest allies. He is certain he could kill Diana before she could truly fight back. 

Diana tilts her head, dark eyes flickering over his face. “What did you see, while you were gone?”

Clark freezes, words choking him, every unsaid thing threatening to burst forth.

“Nothing. I mean- I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was dead, after all.” He forces himself to smile at her. She doesn’t smile back. “I’m just a little tired, you know? You’d think I would have had as much rest as a guy could want but coming back to life really takes it out of you.”

Diana sits back. Clark can see it, some terrible realisation springing into her eyes, some slip he’s made that is enough for her to connect the dots. It shouldn’t be so obvious to her – this Diana shouldn’t know him so well to so easily to see through his lies, acting like she knows him just as he knows _her_ , acting too much like every lie he knows from the dream, and once again the world tips into a blurry sea of colours as the buzzing grows in his head.

Before he can pull away himself, she flips his hand over.

A dark curl of desire races through him as she deliberately presses a fingertip to each small wound, hard enough until it her touch brings a small sting of pain, scratching at his already drying blood. Diana gently traces the lifeline down the centre of his palm before something dark flashes over her face, too quick for Clark to quite parse, and her cherry-red lips curve into a dangerously inviting smile as she gently taps the ball of each of his fingertips with her own before tangling their fingers together. The vertigo hits again, the affectionate gesture achingly familiar, and it takes him nearly a minute to calm the racing of his heart. Remembered anger and desire blur together, the buzzing deafeningly loud as the memory of Diana sliding onto his lap with a playful nip to his chin flickers behind his eyelids, tapping his fingertips with her own as he presses kisses down her long throat, tangling their fingers together as she whispers dark promises in his ear.

Clark shudders, blinking away the image, the memory, tries to focus through the haze in his head. He doesn’t try and pull away from her again. It’s too late for that. Clark is sure Diana has all the answers she needs. He can feel the way the blush heats his face when she sighs, deliberately untangling their hands. Pushing him away _again_. She could be so distant sometimes, so impossible to please. Perhaps he should have given her Quinn as a gift, something to occupy her spare time. Clark blinks away the stray thought.

There’s a brush of air as Diana abruptly stands, the sweet smell of cinnamon wafting from her coat.

“I would ask that you do not lie about this, at least not to _us_. Perhaps you feel you cannot speak to your mother or Lois on this, but whatever the problem is, whatever troubles you so, you would do well to speak at least to myself and the others. Although I know it is asking much of you, when we are still strangers,” she says, a slight bite in her voice that has Clark flinching. There’s a soft sigh, and her voice softens. “We will help you, Kal-El, even if you cannot ask us for it.” Her fingers brush against his cheekbone, and he locks his spine before he can lean into her touch. “Whatever you saw, whatever you experienced, we will do whatever it takes to help you. This is not a burden you must carry alone.”

Biting his lips, he threads his hands together until they stop trembling. Those words have a strange echo around them; another, darker voice promising him the same thing over and over again, empty promises chasing him across the dreams. Not matter how sweet her voice is, he cannot believe her words. He doesn’t have that family here; he doesn’t have the League. _Not yet, not yet, but you could_ , the voice whispers.

With another sigh, Diana taps the stack of papers instead. “Bruce will handle these once you’ve signed everything. We’ll be waiting for you, so please Kal-El, come find us. When you’re ready.” She hesitates at the door, and Clark focuses on her, the gentle scrap of her nails on the wood and the silent click of her tongue as she opens her mouth to speak. “We are… we are on your side, Clark. Don’t forget that.”

Clark doesn’t move as she leaves, half listening to the distant sounds of Ma asking Diana to stay for dinner as he stares down at his hands. The crook of his arm throbs in time with his heart. The other Superman sneers at him inside his head.

At first, Clark doesn’t plan on sleeping again. He doesn’t need it, technically, not with the sun blazing down warm and nourishing. Clark spends his first few days of his resurrection in a lawnchair in the garden, stripped down as much as possible with the sunlight soaking into his flesh. But even with the sunlight, he can feel the exhaustion like a shroud, enveloping him constantly, dragging him towards the yawning darkness of unconsciousness. There’s a tightness in his chest that rattles with each breath he takes, the rough scar tissue from the spear turning from an angry red to a pale pink within days, but still he feels the drag against his very bones like a siren call urging him to close his eyes and rest forever.

He’s actually proud how many days he gets through without alerting his mother, carefully rumpling the bed covers each morning and greeting her with a jaw-cracking yawn over breakfast just to see her wry smile. But he still notices how Ma doesn’t close the bedroom door fully, leaving it slightly open like when he was a boy, like she is just as afraid as he is that he’ll fall asleep and wake up somewhere else entirely. Or perhaps she is the one who thinks it’s a dream. Rather than sleep, he spends the nights trying to sort through the tangle of memories, whispering to himself to fill the silence when it begins to feel too like being back in that wooden box in the ground.

He lasts for ten days before the crippling exhaustion drags him under anyway.

He dreams, just as he feared he would.

But Clark doesn’t get the dreams of before, the soft ones full of laughter and joy. Instead, he gets the perfect world, and that, in a way, is better. What came before was an illusion, fragments of happiness he should never have tried to keep. The new world, the perfect world, that was _his_. It was meant for him, the final conclusion to every broken fragment of his life. They bow to him, cheer his name, thank him for saving them from miserable fates, of riding the world of those who would torment them. He tips his head back and smiles as the yellow sun is blotted out from the encroaching swarm, the buzzing of hundreds of thousands of his demons descending from on high to burn his will into the earth. _Their will_ , _our will,_ my _will. It matters not whose, in the end. I am already coming to purge you all_ , sneers that ancient, fathomless voice.

Clark wakes up, drenched in sweat and screaming, a name lingering on his lips. Ma rushes in, white faced, pieces of plaster dusting her shoulders and hair. He’d punched through the wall in his sleep. Ma strokes his hair back, soothes him like she did when he was a boy, and he closes his eyes and for a moment lets himself pretend.

He moves his pillow out into the barn, just in case.

Lois visits for dinner each night, smiling up at him, kissing him softly over and over again, each time her eyes flickering with a strange surprise when he kisses back. He wonders why, until he catches his face in the mirror seventeen days after he wakes up in his coffin. There’s something different about his face, he’s sure of it. But he can’t remember what Clark Kent looked like, the way he smiled so freely, the way he could love Lois so easily. He looks into the mirror and sees an empty space glaring back.

Waiting to be filled.

It’s gradual, but he notices the way Lois’ kisses come less often, the way she pulls back, smile guarded and strange, and Clark wants to be better for her, tries to remember her Clark, but all he can see is her empty coffin and the taunting laughter telling him he’s too late. He hates how much easier it feels when she leaves.

The papers Diana had left are all stamped with the same logo in shining gold ink. Clark catches himself tracing the loop of the Y, the hard strokes of the W, and almost crumples up the papers. There are hollow promises in his head, quietly offered in the darkness, guarding his heart even as he offered it so freely. Clark takes the offering over and over, like a fool. He can’t stop touching the papers, the signature on the second page scrawled with a practised carelessness. Clark presses his hand against it until his skin warms the paper and the ink smudges at his touch. _Delicate, just like its owner_ , croons the voice. He still slips the folder under his pillow, rests his hand against the Wayne logo until something eases inside his heart.

Each night, he dreams of the perfect world.

Each night, he plunges a hand into the warm cavity of Batman’s chest and sweetly crushes his traitorous heart.

Diana curls in Clark’s bedsheets, smirking up at him as he drags Batman in by his broken arm, tearing the cowl from his face. She slinks over, the sheets puddling around her waist, and tips Bruce’s head back to lick into his mouth. Clark sinks his teeth into corded muscle, bites until Bruce screams and then silences him with a kiss, Bruce’s blood still on his teeth.

Lois smiles softly as Bruce leans down, presses his forehead against her rounded belly, and asks their unborn child to please keep out of Gotham until they can legally drive and spare him the extra greys of babysitting a mini Kryptonian. Clark snorts and nudges Bruce’s thigh with his foot. Bruce quirks a small grin at him, hazel eyes alight with a mischievous glint. Timothy leans over Bruce’s shoulder with undisguised curiosity, laughing when Conner huffs at Clark, trying to look so grown up and aloof, like he isn’t excited at getting a little brother or sister.

Timothy’s screams cut short with a blast of red and Zod’s booming laughter. Batman’s eyes turning blank as he gasses Zod, beats the weakened flesh into messy pulp, but doesn’t take that final step. The ragged sobs Clark can only just hear if he concentrates, tilting his head in the Tower as Cyborg reports on Luthor to ensure he doesn’t miss a moment Bruce’s private agony that he tries to hide away from the world, but even he cannot hide this from Clark. Never from him.

Bruce slumped over the kitchen table, stubble rough under his palm, hands scrabbling against his shoulders. Clark sucks on his tongue, chasing the taste of whiskey. Bruce bites, and Clark hardly feels it. He bites back, and warm copper floods his tongue. “This is not what we do, Clark,” Bruce snarls as Clark flips him onto his stomach, tearing the suit from him like tissue paper. “This is going too far. Even for us, for what we _need_ to do to keep them safe, this is too much.”

Clark shrugs, running a hand over Bruce’s perfectly sculpted back, lingering over each scar, each burn, digging in a nail to open them up again until Bruce is hissing with pain, and Clark has replaced every mark with his own. “You said no more killing, Bruce. I didn’t kill them. And really, you should be thanking me. I doubt you will be having as many escapees from Arkham now they’re all drooling messes.”

Clark hitches his hips back, sliding a hand between Bruce’s thighs and laughing softly at the furious snarl that elicits. The burn of the kryptonite registers before the green glow does, Bruce raking the fragment against his skin. Clark pulls away, ignoring the sizzle of his own flesh to press his hand down hard against Bruce’s thigh. The agonised scream as Bruce’s hips shatter is the sweetest symphony, Clark pressing their mouths together so he can _taste_ that pain.

The cowl falls to the floor between them, Bruce glaring at him, furious eyes not holding a bit of fear, kryptonite shard pressed warningly against Clark’s throat. The rage burns through Clark like an inferno, that Bruce would be so short-sighted, so disgustingly righteous, so _ungrateful_. Ribs and muscle tear beneath his hands, and even as the kryptonite shard drives into his throat and world goes dark, all it takes is a twitch of his fingers to pull Bruce apart along with him. Together even at the end.

“Clark?”

Lois’s soft voice jolts him awake, the taste of blood lingering on his tongue.

It’s still dark out, only a few pale streaks foretelling the dawn. Hay rustles as she climbs off the ladder and settles beside him. He doesn’t sit up, the memories of the dream not quite faded, violence still singing in his veins. His fingers itch, and it terrifies him, because the perfect world had no Lois; her loss had irrevocably shaped him into a twisted, misshapen thing and yet here the urge chases his waking thoughts, urging him to snap her slender spine like a twig. Clark folds his arms, tucking his hands against his ribs and presses until dark spots of pain dances across his vision.

“Quite the little nest you’ve got here,” she says, patting the hay curiously, the unspoken question of ‘why’ hanging in the air.

She isn’t quite looking at him, curled in the hay with a cream blouse she favours for work, smelling of warm bread and roasted coffee beans, absently twisting the ring around her finger. But she doesn’t look at him, a careful distance he never noticed before, and that more than anything pushes him into words.

“I was afraid I might hurt Ma.” He whispers it, but in the stillness of the barn, the words seem to echo, filling up every empty space.

Lois doesn’t answer immediately, and Clark is reminded again why he loves her so much. She doesn’t tell him he won’t, that he’s fine, that he’d never hurt anyone again like he did to Zod.

“Do you _want_ to hurt her?” she finally asks, and Clark is halfway spitting out a furious ‘no’ before he catches himself.

“I… I don’t know,” he admits, and waits for her to tell him he’s a monster. He’s desperate that she does, just confirm every ugly thing he’s thought of, that he’s felt since waking up, is proof that he is damned, that none of this is real, his punishment for his sins. Or maybe Krypton Hell just plain blows. “I don’t ever want her or you to get hurt. Never. But I… these thoughts creep in now, every day, every moment I’m awake, but when I sleep I see-”

Lois takes his hand, but she doesn’t fill the silence. Clark doesn’t want to do it, doesn’t want to say the words out loud. If it’s all in his head, saying it makes it feel more real, makes it some kind of divine providence. He doesn’t want that reality, doesn’t want that horrible, consuming pain. But that tiny terrible ugly part of him says that it is exactly what he wants.

His perfect world.

Lips brush his cheek, and Clark leans into her helplessly, revelling in her warmth, the steady thump of her heartbeat.

“What really happened while you were gone?” she asks.

 _You died_ _so I became the very type of bully I’ve spent years bringing down,_ he doesn’t say, because how do you even try to spin _that_ and not sound crazy.

“I dreamed,” he says instead.

Lois hesitates, small hand creeping into his lap and twining their fingers together. “Was it bad? You’re dream, I mean. Was it bad?”

Clark is now the one who hesitates, unsure how to word it. The pain of losing her, of losing their son, the millions of lives swept away in an instant. The sound of Diana’s laughter, dark hair falling over her shoulder like a wave, pressing kisses to his neck. Bruce’s immaculate poker face as he runs a foot up Clark’s thigh, amicably chatting to the elderly socialite about the upcoming charity gala at the gallery. The gasping breaths of a dying man, and the sweet crunch of his neck under Clark’s boot. Shoving the steel wires into Bruce’s temple and kissing away his screams until perfect blank obedience stares back.

He runs his thumb over her knuckles, pausing over the ring. “It wasn’t so bad,” he admits in a hushed whisper, and the moment he says it, the gnawing biting shame crashes down, and it feels like absolution. “But it’s just that… it felt real. It still feels real. Real enough, anyway. I can’t always… The dreams felt so real, Lo’, and now I sometimes forget that it wasn’t real.”

Lois presses her forehead against their entwined hands, a shaky exhale caressing his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” Clark tells her, because it feels the thing to do, although he’s not exactly sure what he’s sorry for. Dying, he supposes, or maybe just coming back wrong. Or coming back at all.

She touches her mouth to his jaw, presses her cheek to his, and he can feel the wetness against his skin.

“I had wondered…” Lois trails off, and Clark steadies himself to the staccato of her heartbeat. “You talked about this ballgame we went to, talking like it was years ago and we’d had this whole life together. I thought you were just muddled from everything. But I see the way you spook over things that we can’t see… I see the way you look at _me_ and it sca-” She bites off what she was about to say, but it doesn’t matter when Clark can see the horrible truth in her face. Lois takes a shuddering breath and clasps his hand. “I… I saw how you set that extra plate at the dining table, and you don’t even seem aware you’re doing it.”

“It’s…” He can’t think of the words, can’t quite explain that it isn’t wrong for him, his memories… no, his _dream_ is as real as the ring on her hand. “… Complicated.”

She waits for him to continue, but there are no words when he doesn’t even really understand it himself.

“Can you tell me what you _do_ remember from the dream?” Lois whispers, and Clark can smell the saline of her tears. He flinches before he can help it, sees that terrible realisation in Lois’ face before he can disguise it.

“No, I can’t,” he says brusquely, and tells himself it’s better if she recoils in hurt, pulls her hands from his. Better than the truth. He’d rather she resents him than fear him, rather this agonising silence than ever tell her she died, and he hadn’t even been able to save her. He’d go to the grave again before he would ever tell her about Jon.

It’s another week before Lois comes by the house again, tells him that she has another trip for work, her voice sad and too full of things he desperately wants. There’s something final in her words, an offering for one last chance, but Clark doesn’t try and stop her, even though he’s only half sure that it is better this way. He can’t be like it was before, not yet.

He wonders how much she’d already guessed. He wonders if there’d been moments when he’d kissed her and whispered the wrong name, running his fingers through dark hair only to remember too late that her’s was fiery red.

He wonders if she’d seen the way he flinched away from her, like he was touching a dead thing.

Clark hates the thoughts, hates the laughing darkness and that traitorous kernel of pleasure at her finally being gone, hates and hates and hates himself. Hates how much he’s lost, and half of it hadn’t even been _real_. Here, he never grew up with Lara and Jor-El, had never known Kara or Conner or Jimmy. Here, the League were strangers, with Hal and Dinah not even seeming to _exist_. Here, he’d never even been a father. This dream, this reality, it was the emptiest he’d ever been in.

In the darkness of the barn, he buries his face in his hands and finally lets himself cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought I'd better separate the fic into chapters, since this fic didn't end up being 10k like I'd planned.
> 
> I realise it's kinda ambiguous whether Clark and Lois have broken up for good, but I wanted it up in the air so it could fall either way. Either Lois is single and calmly sipping Pina Coladas in Guam away from all this mess, OR once Lois comes back she can have a fantastic ménage à trois with the boys ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	2. May I Help You, Mr. Wayne?

Clark doesn’t mean to, but when the phone call comes, he obeys without thought, Diana’s curt message demanding he come to the League dragging him from the oppressive silence of the house. He obeys, and the voice whispers how right it is, how easy mindless obedience is than the pain of _thinking_. _So close_ , it murmurs, even when he shakes his head to rid it from his mind. He hates the ache in his at the sound of her voice, the eagerness to see them all again, how much he _misses_ them when the League doesn’t even exist here. How pathetic he is to miss a dream.

He floats down the service tunnel at the edge of Gotham Bay, shivering slightly as he descends into the underground caverns and the yawning darkness below, and blinks in surprise when his feet touch the ground. He’d assumed this was simply a private place to meet, that there was no League in this world, no _team_ but the cavernous tunnel is far from empty. Clark blinks as he steps into the tunnel proper, trying not to gawk at the hulking vehicle parked in the corner.

Floodlights illuminate the space, tangles of wires winding across the floor and walls, monitors of all sizes dotting the organized chaos. There’s a nest of coffee cups and empty pizza boxes in one corner, an array of game consoles making a wall around it. A worn leather jacket lies on a huge table alongside several cannibalised computer motherboards, a cracked laptop thrown over the broken prongs of a trident. A bronze set of armour hangs on a wooden dummy, runes carved into spirals across the chestplate, a wicker basket beneath it full of dirtied rags and a single torn silk scarf that all smell of oil and grease. A gleaming sword sits in an umbrella stand next to the basket.

Little things that speak of a space well lived in, but it’s so… Clark stares at the space with wide eyes. _Pathetic_ , the voice in his head sneers. Unglamorous, he corrects. No Tower watching over a city, no space station watching over the world. Not even a towering hall of marble. This was not a place of gods.

It’s so alien to anything that has come before, so strangely authentic, it makes Clark’s teeth ache. He runs a hand over a steel medical trolley overflowing with broken walkie talkies and newspaper clippings held down by a half-empty Dr. Pepper with a scribbled note saying ‘ _Hands OFF Fish Man or else’ _and the messy doodle of a lightning bolt underneath. He breaths in, the stench of machine oil and stale food mixing with the odour of stagnant water. Somehow, it feels more real than anything else since waking up. Clark can’t help the laugh that spills out of his mouth.

There’s a clunk of metal and a hiss that brings the sharp smell of propane. Clark jumps, shocked that he missed the tell-tale sound of another’s heartbeat so close, that he’d let his guard down so easily in such an unfamiliar place, focusing on the hulking black machine in the corner.

All he can see are long legs clad in moulded grey armour stretched out underneath one enormous suspended tire, sparks pouring out of the black metal like a shower of stars. Diana is nowhere in sight. Clark shudders as something claws at his heart, makes his mouth dry at the sight of the black booted foot tapping idly against the ground, and considers running and simply telling Diana he’s busy rather than stay and see-

“Hey Wonder Boy.”

Batman isn’t wearing the cowl, and it’s always such a shock, a delicious juxtaposition to see the sculpted grey suit with Bruce’s worn face glaring back at him. Clark loved running his tongue along the collar, dipping just underneath to taste where the Bat ended and Bruce began, sucking marks onto his collar bone and knowing Bruce is already marked when he fights, when he slams his opponent into the ground and twists just right until there’s a satisfying pop. And afterwards, Clark would peel back the suit from Bruce’s shaking legs, bite into his thighs, groaning at Bruce laid out before him, too exhausted from fighting to do anything but _take_ it.

“Hey,” Clark tries for casual, tries to remember how his voice sounded, how to be normal. Bruce’s eyes flash, a too quick expression that disappears before Clark can hope to parse it. He wonders if Diana has told Bruce already, or if he even needed to be told a thing to figure out there was something wrong with Clark, confirming every terrible suspicion he’s ever held. “How are you…” he pauses, frantically scrambling for the appropriate term of address as Bruce’s eyes drill into him, “…Mr. Wayne.”

 _Stranger_ , he reminds himself as he gives his best reporter smile _, just ‘Mr. Wayne’ for the farm boy_. Although, Clark would like to think that killing and then resurrecting that same person should really let them be on a first name basis. He keeps the cheesy grin on his face a tad too long, watches the way Bruce’s eyebrow hitches as his eyes flicker over Clark in a quick once over.

Clark hastily drops the fake smile, falls into the quiet reserve of Superman, the alien hero that must be more familiar to Bruce, to Batman. In that role, at least, they can be more equal and less like strangers.

He hopes.

Except Bruce just rolls his eyes at Superman with a quiet huff of laughter and Clark flushes, feeling every inch the country bumpkin. He doesn’t know what is right here, how best to interact with this Bruce when every memory clamour inside his skull telling him a different story. There’s a soft thump as the Bat leans back against a metal panel, relaxed yet alert, his dark eyes glittering as he takes Clark’s measure. Clark swallows and glances away, unable to take the full force of that dark gaze on him, unable to hold back the swarm of emotions it brings with it. But he can still hear every breath, every steady thump of Bruce’s heartbeat, echoing like a drum inside his head, almost as loud at the buzzing whispers. The man may be different but Bruce’s heart sounded no different from Clark’s dreams, a steadying constant that he desperately wants to cling to, even when there’s the niggling reminder that he shouldn’t know the sound of Bruce’s heartbeat at all. He was just a stranger here.

There’s a harsh sigh and Clark can’t help quickly glancing back as Bruce shifts to lie back on the black trolley _(“It’s called a ‘car creeper’, Supes”,_ Jason Todd scoffs, still small and thrilled at being the new Robin, long before he knows the agony of a painful death, long before he comes back twisted and cold).

“Lift this panel for me,” Bruce jerks a thumb at the black metal monstrosity he calls a car. Clark shakes himself from the press of memories, hesitantly stepping closer and watching if Bruce would flinch back, would go cold and unwelcoming and heartbreakingly fierce. The dark gaze doesn’t change as Clark comes up beside Bruce, doesn’t flicker even with Clark looming over him, and it almost feels like trust. Like faith. _Pray to your God, Bruce_ , the voice whispers in Clark’s head. _Pray for my mercy_.

It feels strangely good to be trusted, to be looked at and feel as though Bruce _sees_ him. In Bruce’s eyes, he is a hero, a man, an alien, a threat, an ally. In Bruce’s eyes, there lies endless possibilities and a man who is always prepared to deal with any of them, and something inside Clark relaxes at the thought, the world no longer constantly slipping out from underneath him. For the first time since waking up, Clark feels a strange sense of clarity.

He runs a hand against the black metal of the vehicle, surprised to find it warm under his touch, like he was stroking the flank of a living creature.

“Going to help me with this sometimes this century, Smallville?” Bruce’s voice is dry, but there’s a tiny curl of his lips that soften the bite of the nickname that has Clark helplessly grinning in return.

“Not worried I’ll drop it on you?” Clark means it as a joke, but there’s a thread of uncertainty in there that he knows Bruce notices by the sharp clench of his jaw.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did.” Bruce’s eyes catch his, hold him, and Clark wants to dig his thumb into those clever eyes and pop them like grapes.

The metal bender groans under Clark’s fingers, and he hurriedly tries to relax before Bruce can react, pushing the stray thought from his mind. The intrusive whispers are getting worse, more frequent. More focused. He swallows, not looking down at the very focus of those thoughts tinkering away beneath him.

Clark doesn’t mean to show off since there is absolutely no need with Bruce of all people, but he wants that quirk of the lips, the only sign Bruce would ever give him when he was in the suit that he was amused. He tries not to wilt under the unimpressed look Bruce shoots him when he bends and lifts the entire car with one hand clean off the ground.

“Sorry-” he begins to say, moving to lower the car again, but Bruce is already sliding back underneath it.

“Who knew you’d be handy to so have around?” Bruce mutters wryly, and Clark is glad he’s still busy underneath the car when he turns pink at such an innocuous thing.

Bruce grunts, right knee twitching up as something hisses and a strong smell of gas fills the air. “Is this thing- er, car new?” Clark asks, watching the muscles in Bruce’s thigh bunch underneath the grey suit, flexing and releasing.

“Are we really doing small talk right now?” Bruce’s voice is incredulous.

“I could discuss the weather if you’d prefer?” Clark replies sheepishly.

There’s an explosive sigh from the depths of the car. Bruce’s legs crook, fall open, before he slides back out from under the car. He quirks an eyebrow up at Clark.

“After all the shit that went down between us, I can’t say I was expecting small talk from you when we came face to face again.”

“What were you expecting from me?” It wasn’t meant to come out as flirty, but Bruce hasn’t sat up, flat on his back gazing up at him, at Superman, the alien monster he’d railed against, lying there open and vulnerable and _trusting_. Clark distantly wonders if Diana will come before he can kneel over Bruce’s head and feed him his cock. “What did you think I’d do, since small talk is off the table?”

“Honestly, a punch. Maybe a few cracked ribs.” Bruce looks delighted by the thought.

Clark rolls his eyes. Masochist.

“You stopped, Bruce,” and Clark notes with a jolt how Bruce’s eyes widen at the name, the way his mouth parts just slightly with a breathless gasp. He ignores it, ignores the way it pulls at something dark inside him that whispers that motor oil is a good enough lube if need be. “You stopped when you could have just as easily ended me. You _helped_ me. You saved my mother, you saved Metropolis, probably even saved the world if Doomsday had been left to run rampant. I think you’ve done more than enough to make up for a misunderstanding.”

“ _Misunder_ \- are you serious? See, this is why people call you a boy scout, Smallville.” Bruce shakes a blowtorch at him, face darkening with something twisted and ugly that makes Clark’s heart lurch. “‘Misunderstanding’. Is _that_ what you call me almost beating you to death?”

“I seem to recall you barely surviving our fight, especially when I was holding back to begin with,” Clark says, quirking an eyebrow, pleased when Bruce’s expression softens.

“That is the difference between you and me, Smallville,” Bruce says with a derisive snort, but there’s no heat in his eyes when he looks Clark, only a bleakness that he wishes he could kiss away. “At your core, you are a good man… and I’m not.”

Clark swallows, unable to look at the fierce belief on Bruce’s face that what he says is an unchangeable truth. Not when the other Clark presses so close inside his skull, hissing words of love to Bruce as he shatters bone and tears at flesh.

“I don’t want to believe you really think that,” Clark says, eyes on the polished black metal of Bruce’s vehicle. “I don’t believe you’re the monster you think you are.”

There’s a sharp laugh at that, but Clark can’t look. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he looks, if he sees every ugly thing on Bruce’s face that he can hear in his voice. “You thought the Bat was a monster easily enough. And I gave you good reason to. I _was_ a monster. Even Lex saw that, and from what I gather, he didn’t even need to do a thing to set you after me. He just showed you what was hiding in the shadows.”

“Lex was a sadistic sociopath, I’m not sure his opinion counts for anything. Not to me, anyway,” Clark argues, because Bruce is right about the other things, about how readily Clark believed turned on those who he could have called friend, so willing to see monsters in the dark.

“But you saw me for what I was. A man playing at being a hero who fights for his own selfish ends. Even now, I told everyone that you needed to be brought back with empty words of how the world’s only hope was you, when deep down I knew that I wanted you back just so you could absolve _me_.” There’s an echoing clang as Bruce’s hurls the blowtorch at a metal crate.

Releasing his breath in a shaky sigh, Clark pushes himself to speak, cannot let himself dwell on the way his pulse jumps at the idea of being brought back just for _Bruce_. A stranger, he tries to remind himself. He’s still just a stranger. Except Bruce’s face is dark with self-loathing, a sight that is as familiar as the sun to Clark, and he knows how to push that darkness away, knows how to smooth the pain from Bruce’s face and _show_ him how beautiful he is.

Clark should move, step back so he isn’t standing over Bruce, look away and stop seeing how vulnerable he is flat on his back and practically begging for Clark to drag him up by his hair, press his face to Clark’s cock and _remind_ him exactly who it is he fights for now. He swallows, splays his hand against the warm metal of the vehicle until the trembling stops.

“No one stays good in this world,” Clark says, the words tasting familiar on his tongue.

“Not even you?” Bruce says with a derisive snort. He nudges Clark’s boot with his foot, a friendly smile softening his face when Clark turns to meet his eyes, smoothing the worn look of the vigilante into the devastatingly handsome face that is splashed across the Gotham Gazette every other day.

Clark carefully shifts back as innocuously as possible, focusing on the car and the mess of machinery inside.

“You said it yourself, how ready I was to make a monster of you. How self-righteous I was.” Clark shrugs. “How many different ways do you think things could have gone differently for me, giving the right push? What I could have become given the chance?” Clark says it for the sake of filling the silence and drowning out the heavy whispers crooning in his ears, as close to speaking the truth since he’d woken up.

Maybe he was really the one who wanted to be absolved. Wonders as he wordlessly hands Bruce the needle nose plyers whether Bruce was the only one who could understand the dark itch that urges violence clawing its way up Clark’s spine, telling him how easy it is, how much _better_ things would be. All it would take was that final step. One he’d already crossed with Zod, crossed a million times with a million others. _One more step_ , the voice whispers with delight..

Bruce takes the plyers with a surprised blink, gloved fingers brushing Clark’s. Clark remembers too late that he’s not supposed to know about this kind of machinery, that he doesn’t banter with Batman like they’re old friends. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t have that here. Except that the corner of Bruce’s mouth ticks up in a crooked smile, lazy and confident and just as helplessly arousing as Clark’s memories. Dreams. Whatever.

“As much as I enjoy this little tête-à-tête we’re having on who is the bigger baddy here, I’m still waiting for an answer,” Bruce says idly, twirling the needle nose plyers in his hand. “Why are you so ready to give me a pass after what I did?”

There’s grey threaded through Bruce’s dark hair, dark stubble on his jaw. A small scar pinches the skin just below his left ear. Little things Clark shouldn’t notice. He opens his mouth, but the words don’t come, just a consuming desire to bend down and lose himself in Bruce’s punishing touch.

Some part of his thoughts must show on his face when Bruce’s eyes flicker, leaning back on his elbows with a sinuous roll of his shoulders and Clark freezes, a blush working its way up his neck at the look he gets. It’s a lazy once over, a slow slide of eyes from head to toe that is appraising in the worst possible way, and when Bruce meets his eyes again, they have gone shadow dark with heated promise, drawing Clark in.

He steps forward, and naked hunger darkens Bruce’s face.

“Boys,” Diana greets loudly, stepping nimbly around the car. She has a giant milkshake in one hand, a box of still-warm donuts in the other. The smell of cinnamon fills the air.

Clark stumbles back from the car, feeling a blush heat his neck. The sound of a still racing heartbeat echoes in his ears, the tiny sigh that hisses past Bruce’s lips that rattles around Clark’s head that sets his skin on fire.

Diana sits on a wooden crate and idly flicks open the donut box. Clark feels the hair stand on end at the back of his neck when he meets her dark eyes. He remembers all too well that she doesn’t need her sword to deliver a killing blow.

“I had told you not to do anything like that until I got back,” she says to Bruce, but her eyes remain on Clark.

Bruce stands with a sigh, rubbing his eyes. It leaves a little smudge of grease on his cheekbone. Clark forces himself to look away.

“Just wanted to know what we’re dealing with.” Bruce brushes past him, heading for the donuts. It feels unnecessarily close. Clark turns his face away with a sharp breath, the buzzing in his head growing louder.

“Bruce,” Diana warns, but he smiles, all boyish billionaire charm.

“Did you already- Did Lois tell you about…” Clark gestures awkwardly.

Diana sighs, but her smile is kind. “We understand the situation, given what she has told us and how you have reacted. It would seem prophetic dreams, or rather, nightmares of other lives that might occur, are not so uncommon ever since the other Kryptonians crashed here. The energy readings from the Mother Boxes seem to be causing these odd visions, though we fear they have been increasing in frequency these last few months. Victor’s reports have been most alarming, but it seems mostly contained to certain individuals so far.”

Clark starts at that. He had assumed he was the only one, that he’d simply… came back wrong. He shoots a glance at Bruce, but the roguish smile is gone, and the grim expression sends a chill down his spine.

“You’re not the only one having trouble with telling dreams from reality, Clark,” Bruce says quietly, and the intimacy of his name on those lips immediately brings a rush of vertigo. Too quick images flicker behind his eyes, snapshots of another life, of another man saying that name as red threads his vision, and when he can breathe again, can look again, Bruce and Diana are watching him, bodies tense lines of barely contained power.

“Sorry about that,” he says as calmly as possible, even as the blood-red heat doesn’t quite fade from around his eyes, and Diana frowns.

“You do not have to apologise, Kal-El.” She steps close, sending a warning look at Bruce when he twitches in alarm. “What happened, what is happening, it must be difficult for you. But we will help you get through it, if you want us to. But you _never_ have to apologise to us if you get mixed up. None of this is your fault.”

“You don’t know what I’m– the things I’m thinking, they’re _terrible_. If you knew –”

Bruce is the one who steps close this time, but he keeps Diana between them, cautious in a way that reminds Clark again how very breakable he is compared to the two of them. How easy it was to break his spine and watch him crumple like a marionette without strings at his feet.

“Don’t speak for us, son,” Bruce sneers.

It’s condescending, a little rude, but it’s sharp and harsh and quiets the panic building in his chest. Bruce, totally unruffled despite all the weird shit that gets thrown his way. Reliable, always so reliable. Clark wants to bury his face into Bruce’s neck, just sink into him and know that he is safe so long as Batman is on his side. Lock him away from light and sound and all those traitors with their poisonous words pulling him away from Clark’s side where he _belongs_.

“You’ve got that look again,” Bruce says quietly, breaking him from his lull.

Clark swallows down the words that belong for the other Bruce. “What look?”

“Like you see someone else standing here,” Diana answers. “So, who do you see, Kal-El?” He blushes at the knowing look in her eyes, at the dream-memory of her lips pressed against his skin, the way he’d lit up like a Christmas tree at the barest touch from her.

“It’s complicated,” he says weakly, and wilts under the twin force of their unimpressed looks. “It’s not just a dream for me. I can’t just pretend it’s not real, because it is. It was. I died, but it felt like I just kept on living, I had years upon years of these whole other lives and then I come to six feet under and suddenly none of it ever happened? I remember the tornado that tore through the county last year and when I tell Ma, she looks so scared like she’s gonna cry. I ask Lois about talking to Kara and try and pretend it’s only a slip when I have no idea if they’ve even met yet because she thinks I’m crazy. Until I remember that Kara doesn’t even _exist_ here apparently. I talk about Dad and forget which father I’m even talking about _as I’m speaking._ ”

“Clark,” Bruce says, reaching out a hand to him, but Clark suddenly can’t stop, the words bursting forth and the anger, the confusion, the fear bleeding out of him.

“Don’t _say_ that!” he screams, and they both step back in alarm, but he can’t calm down, everything suddenly burning through him and making his head spin. “Don’t say my name like we’re friends. We’re not. You’re not – I remember the feeling of your fists, the agony of the kryptonite gas. The pain of you holding me down and cutting me feels like the only real thing I remember from _here_ , and even that is so fucked up because I remember hurting you too, and I don’t even know if that’s real even though I _want_ it to be.”

“Kal-El, calm down,” Diana says, voice ringing in the cavernous tunnel like the peals of a bell. She plucks the sword from the umbrella stand, the lines of runes shining silver under the fluorescent lights. She steps forward, tilting her hips slightly, placing herself between him and Bruce, and Clark doesn’t mean to laugh, but the thing that spills past his lips is ugly, alien, not him at all.

It belongs to the Regime, to Lord Superman, to screams and fire and a voice in the darkness that calls him to violence that will bring a perfect world.

“Do you even know how crazy I feel?” he shouts, pain and loneliness and fear burning inside him. His vision tints red and Bruce jerks back in alarm. “I remember how you look when I fuck you. Both of you. I know what you taste like, what you sound like, I know how to make you scream and melt with a single touch, and we don’t even _know_ each other. I’d not even been with a someone here until Lois, but I look at you and remember every filthy thing even though before I died, I didn’t even know your _names._ I start crying at home because I’m grieving the death of a son that doesn’t even _exist_ , or I’m spending every waking moment listening for Lois’ heartbeat, waiting for the moment it stops, looking at her smile and remembering the empty coffin because there wasn’t even anything left to _bury_. So don’t tell me to calm down!”

The flat of the blade slams against his chest, knocking the air from him. He tries to twist, grabbing for her long hair, but Diana slams her foot against his ankle, sending him into the ground so hard the whole tunnel shudders. He snarls, lets his vision go red, heedless of the blade at his throat, the screams of his name. He wants her to burn, was the fire to raze this ugly world to the ground until he can build his perfect world, can carve _His_ name into the very earth, a welcome sign after He travels the stars to rid them of the plague of free will.

“Focus, Smallville,” the voice in his ear murmurs, and a light touch taps against the molten heat of his temples, tracing the glowing veins around his eyes. “The laser eyes are a bit much for me to handle. And honestly, I’d rather not go out that way. I’ve got too many expensive suits that’ll go to waste if there’s no body for Alfred to bury me in.”

It’s ridiculous, it’s pathetically predictable, but the calm voice of Bruce Wayne drags him back out of his own head. The hand is still on his cheek, against his eyes, perhaps ready to shield Diana and buy her a few precious seconds. _Masochist_.

“I don’t have laser eyes,” he mumbles, the foreign thoughts still rattling inside his head as the buzzing quiets to a dull drone.

“Atta boy,” Bruce pats his cheek and Diana sighs, blade disappearing from his throat.

“You two are too much trouble,” she chides, but she doesn’t move off of him, knee still pressing into Clark’s chest.

“We can’t all have thousands of years of training and control under our belts,” Bruce says, the thunderous pounding of his heart at odd with his blasé smirk. Clark times his breaths to match Bruce’s, focuses on each shaky exhale and not the itch crawling up his spine to take Diana’s leg and snap it in two.

“Although you seemed to have tried these past twenty years.” Diana smiles, indulgent, fond, and Clark wills away the jealous stab, uncertain who he’s even jealous _of_ in this moment. They’re not his, he reminds himself. They never were.

“Calmed down there, Smallville?” Bruce asks, nudging him with a boot. Diana’s look is acidic, but Clark laughs, shakily, glad for the casual touch. Acting like things are normal, like he’s not an alien nutcase and becoming the very thing Luthor and Bruce feared him to be.

“I’m losing my mind,” he admits, smiling when they both raise their eyebrows in unison.

Bruce smirks. “Happens to the best of us.” The shadow of guilt passes over his face, there and gone before Clark can say a word, assure him that it’s alright, he doesn’t blame him at all. He wants to whisper that into Bruce’s skin, trap him in the cage of his arms and tell him until he believes it. Burn it into his flesh so he can never forget. He pushes away that stray thought, Lord Superman still too close under his skin, too loud in his head.

Diana eases off him, hand on his bicep to pull him up with an easy strength. It’s still shocking after a lifetime of being so much stronger, so unmatched, to feel so easily handled. It was why he went to her, after Lois. He pushes that thought away too.

He stands shakily, adrenaline still coursing through him, the voices still clamouring in the back of his skull. “What now?” he asks awkwardly, because there’s really no polite way to ask if they’re going to kill him.

“This is Darkseid’s influence, a plan enacted by Steppenwolf with the help of the Mother Boxes.” Diana picks up a donut, popping it whole into her mouth. It’s so undignified, so graceless, that Clark can’t help but stare. The Diana in his dreams had never done such a thing. He watches her lick the sugar from her thumb, memorising the way her cheeks still bulge with food even as she selects another.

A difference. A single difference.

The world feels off balance, but it’s good, it’s great even. He can build on this. Build back himself from the beautiful dream all on a single donut. Clark tries not to laugh, or they really will think he’s losing his mind.

“Since it’s the Mother Box, we at least have a bit of an idea how to get Darkseid out of your head,” Bruce chimes in, swinging into the car. He emerges with a manila folder. “Plenty of practice while you were down, unfortunately.” He taps his own head with a wry smile.

Clark takes the offered folder, and jolts when a finger runs over the back of his hand. He stares at Bruce, wide eyed, but the stone-faced bastard doesn’t so much as twitch. The other Bruce in his memories smirks, lets Clark drag him down by his cape, mouth open and tongue slick. He shakes his head, pushing away that dream Bruce, but he’s quite sure that unlike Diana, the Bruce of his dreams is no different than the one standing in front of him.

He flips open the folder to escape the molten gaze fixed on him.

He looks up.

“No.”

“Why ever not?” Bruce says with a shark-grin.

“I’m not interviewing you, Bruce, and you are _not_ hiring me.” It’s a small revenge, but he relishes the heated look that he gets just by using Bruce’s name on Clark’s tongue, even if it excites himself just as much.

“The Mother Box is at Wayne Tower,” Diana mumbles indistinctly around the straw of her smoothie. “And we would prefer to keep any eye on you while you’re in its presence. But as a reporter, we do not have to pretend too much. This way, it is just a business meeting, an interview. Bruce has become accustomed to recognising the effects of the Boxes, so he will need to be present when we activate the Box to disrupt the signal. Victor will be the one to activate the box and will be monitoring both it and you, so you needn’t fear for anyone’s safety. We have taken these past few weeks ensuring the necessary precautions should we require it.”

Clark hesitates, not because he is afraid he’ll hurt someone (and the thought that it _isn’t_ his biggest worry claws his insides with guilt) but that he won’t be able to control himself. He dreams of sharp teeth and sneering words in the dead of night, twining around one another on rooftops, snatches of hurried touches between missions, and it’s not real, but it _could_ be, and the temptation terrifies him. He could have it. He could have _Bruce_ , not just the Bat but both of them, when he never really had that other side in the other worlds, never had Bruce Wayne in that perfect world. He had Batman, the partner, the confidante, but the man behind the cowl was never quite his, too busy with a gaggle of children and string of lovers. But here, in this world (the _real_ world, he reminds himself), there is no storied history, no obligations, no one to answer to. A second chance to start over. Clark can’t let himself imagine it, because he’ll be lost, drowning in something he doesn’t deserve. No different from Lois, from Diana.

He feels the warmth against his arm as Bruce steps close to his side, not quite touching. “We said we’ll help you, Clark, whatever the cost.”

Clark looks at Bruce and loses himself. Bruce’s face is open, full of shame, of burning earnest stubbornness and hard steel that makes Clark feel stronger, that tells him it will be alright.

He nods. He can overcome this. He won’t let that other Clark win.

The crooked smile, the brief flash of teeth behind Bruce’s soft lips – all of it dazzles like the first rays of sun over the horizon, something heartbreakingly indescribably beautiful. Clark feels ridiculous, head full of poetry, and he doesn’t know this man, he doesn’t, except he’d found a yellowed envelop of news clippings and paparazzi photos in his desk that remind him of the time before, lost in the cobweb haze of dreamt memories, when Clark thought he could be saved so long as he stopped this masked vigilante, this Bat of Gotham.

The Bat growls out promises of protection and salvation in his memories, and he can do nothing but believe him. Bruce Wayne growls out promises of the same now with a smirk and heated hazel eyes, and Clark is a slave all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idk why, but I'm kinda obsessed with the DCEU League hanging out in an absolute shithole. They are all disasters in the movies and I love it.


	3. This Is My World

If Clark is being perfectly honest with himself, he was expecting more wood panelling.

That had always been a thing in the movies. The CEO glaring out of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the ridiculously minimalist room, a tumbler of amber liquid in hand, and beautifully polished wood panelling. It’s strangely irritating that Bruce Wayne’s office contains none of those things.

“Please take a seat, Mr. Kent,” the assistant, Ms Crown, says, waving him onto a sleek black sofa. “Mr. Wayne will be with you shortly.”

She’s older than he expected, another thing that throws him off; no slender supermodel PA in sleek lowcut dresses and ridiculously high heels, instead Bruce Wayne’s secretary is surprisingly plain. He hates the thought as soon as it crosses his mind, an uncharitable thought that sends a stab of guilt through him. He’s been catching himself out like that more and more, ever since he came back, no longer whispers but his own thoughts. Feelings that are alien to him, like they belong to someone else, and yet he feels them all the same.

Clark sits, the black leather creaking as he sinks onto the sofa, tries very hard not to fidget, but the sofa is shockingly soft and it’s throwing him off balance.

Ms Crown clears her throat as Clark distractedly flexes his fingers against the smooth leather cushions. “Can I get you anything while you wait? Tea? Coffee?” she asks with a warm smile, eyes pointedly locked on his hands, and Clark lets go, feeling a blush already spreading up his neck.

“Thank you very much,” Clark hurriedly says, folding his hands in his lap.

Ms Crown raises an eyebrow, polite smile quirking into amusement.

“Tea or coffee?” she repeats.

Clark ducks his head as embarrassment licks his spine. “Oh, um, coffee please.” He hates how the words stumble out, how she doesn’t look surprised in the least by his nerves. He’s sure she’s seen it all before – how many before him have blushed and stuttered over meeting Bruce Wayne. How many have pressed Bruce Wayne into this plush leather sofa, ruining those perfectly tailored suits and fucking him until he screamed? Clark shivers, shaking his head of the errant thought.

When she leaves, the room settles with a strange quiet. He distractedly runs his eyes over the books lining the shelves lining the wall behind Bruce’s desk, ledgers and volumes amidst tasteful pottery and a framed photo of a small boy doing a cartwheel. The wall is a dark charcoal grey. There is nothing beyond the smooth plaster.

Clark blinks, and sees nothing.

He glances at the door, but the hallway beyond it doesn’t flicker into view as it normally would. The walls remain solid, impenetrable. Clark tilts his head, concentrating. There’s the steady snap of the clock hand on the wall, the hum of the computer monitors, the soft buzz of electricity in the lights, the soft hiss of the air filter. Beyond that, there are voices, softly muffled, but too indistinct to make out, even when Clark focuses. The quiet seems to grow even louder, an oppressive blanket of emptiness that drags at his skin.

Unease prickles over his neck.

He can still remember the feeling of his skin splitting open, the way the Bat had looked down at him with the spear at his throat, eyes empty, merciless.

No one could accuse Batman of not being cautious, a gadget for everything, a man who always had a plan. Bruce Wayne is no different, it seemed. His office is carefully fortified behind glossy marble floors and decorative ferns, a beautiful façade to hide the layers of protection built into the very walls to lock everything away from Clark. It feels like a prison. Or a coffin. One even _he_ can’t escape from. Or perhaps more accurately, a coffin made just for him.

Clark bites his lip and steps over to the window, focuses on the setting sun warming his skin and chasing away the gnawing cold that aches in his chest. He stares blindly at the bronze statue of a couple curled around one another. They’re nude, a tasteful art pierce, like the ancient Greek statues. The light of the setting sun gleams on the sculpted muscles of the figures, entwined in a moment of passion captured in polished metal. Vertigo hits as a red film clouds his vision, nearly sending Clark to his knees. He leans against the low cupboards and breathes, focuses on the sensation like Diana had taught him to fight off the effect of the Box, the best preparation they could offer before he arrived at Wayne Enterprises. His mind begins to quiet again.

He doesn’t open his eyes as the door clicks open, bringing the rich smell of roasted coffee beans and a sharp, earthy cologne. Red heat pricks behind his eyelids.

“Admiring my artwork, Kent?”

He keeps his eyes clenched shut, feels the air around him shift as Bruce leans over and the soft thump as he sets the coffee down. He smells like rain. There’s a steady rushing, the blood flowing strong through Bruce’s veins, as loud as a river, drowning everything else out. Alive, he repeats to himself, alive alive alive. There’s something slick on his fingers, warm and sticky. The scent of iron fills the air, thick and cloying. Clark opens his eyes and picks up the coffee with a shaking hand, lets the rich flavour coat his tongue and chase away the flicker of thought that urges him forward. He glances at his fingers curled around the black porcelain, clean and unblemished, and pushes away the memory of muscle and bone snapping beneath his fingers, Bruce’s agonised screaming as Clark tore his chest open to pluck out his still-beating heart. A dream, it was all just a dream. There was no blood on his hands. Calm down, Lady Macbeth, he tells himself, and even the joke inside his own head feels hollow, forced.

“It’s a nice statue,” Clark says, just to drown out the sound of Bruce’s heartbeat echoing in his head. From the corner of his eye, Bruce scoffs, unbuttoning his jacket. Clark doesn’t look, and he counts it as another victory.

“Of course it’s nice, it’s Rodin,” Bruce says airily, flicking the bronze statue. Clark follows the way Bruce’s knuckle slides down the dark metal back of the woman. He can beneath that skin, can see the veins webbing over the bones of Bruce’s hand, the skin all but translucent, twining around the joints to curl under each half-moon nail. There are tiny tendrils that break off from the veins like vines, creeping over the shadowed cracks of long healed fractures. On each knuckle is a patch of worn scar tissue, a patchwork of skin made of decades worth of knuckles splitting over skin. Clark only has one scar, and even that one is already fading with each passing day under the sun. Not like this. Not like Bruce, who carries each battle with him day in and day out, every fight carved into his body like a brand.

All it would take is a single tap of Clark’s fingertip to shatter every single one of those bones.

Clark jolts, and only years of practised self-control prevents him from rocketing through the wall with the unconscious movement when his concentration is as scattered as it is. “Thanks for the coffee,” Clark says, chokes, but Bruce doesn’t call him on it, eyes on the cup cradled in his hands.

“Do you even feel that it’s hot? What it tastes like? Or is it different for you?” he asks instead, and Clark pauses with the cup at his lips.

It’s always a shock to be treated so _alien_ , the callous way Bruce looks at him and never for a second sees a human man. There’s still that insecurity that has him shrinking away, that wants to insist he’s as human as anyone, even if Bruce need only give him a look to feel like an idiot just for suggesting it.

He tells himself it’s just Bruce’s endless obsession with needing to know everything, catalogue every little bit of information and hoarding it away for possible future use. There’s a reason Batman is the strategist, the tactician, always so prepared. He asks Clark because he is genuinely curious. Not to betray him. Again. Fighting him every step of the way until Clark holds him down and lets Brainiac’s wires split Bruce’s skull, ripping away every traitorous thought from his head. Not a traitor, not this Bruce. It’s just honest, clinical curiosity. Nothing personal. Clark repeats it to himself every time, hoping one day it will feel like the truth.

“Well, Perry usually only gives us enough instant to get us through deadline, so I’m not the best judge on coffee,” Clark tries to joke, painfully aware of the slight wobble in his voice.

He sounds like a child, pathetic and small.

It’s stupid of him, but he tries to pull on the anger of the dream before the hurt shows on his face and Bruce sees how pathetically _weak_ he really is. Lord Superman doesn’t stir in his head, leaving Clark to sip awkwardly at his coffee and not give into temptation to simply jump out Bruce’s office window. He never felt unequal with Batman, but with Bruce Wayne he’s suddenly a small-town hick way out of his depth. If he flew out to space right now, he wouldn’t have to feel like such a plebe, awkward in his own indestructible skin.

It would be easier, Clark reasons, if Bruce didn’t wear those suits. Sauntering into rooms in knit ties and woollen waistcoats tailored to an inch of his life, knowing he looks a million bucks, like he’s worth every penny to his name, and despite the stories the tabloids run, the reputation that follows him like a cloud, darkening every doorway he steps into, it’s pointless to try and stay away. They follow him with star-struck eyes, and Clark has caught himself one too many times slipping into the exact same state when he catches sight of Bruce striding into the room, overcoat flapping around his muscled legs.

Clark sips his coffee.

Bruce’s eyes burn into him. Clark sincerely hopes his face is completely blank. He’d practised all morning in the mirror just in case.

“So,” he says awkwardly, trying to keep his eyes from wandering down the breath of Bruce’s chest, the curl of his hands. ‘Eyes to yourself, Kent,’ he chides himself, painfully aware that Bruce’s cologne is a sweet, earthy musk that makes his head swim. “How exactly do we do this? Do I need to, um, touch the Box or…?”

Bruce chuckles, a dark rich sound. “Nothing so exciting, unfortunately.” He circles his desk rolling up his dress shirt. Clark turns away from the flex of his forearms. “Victor says he’s reversed the signal, some kind of sciencey galactic stuff that is honestly a little beyond me. Lucius got excited though, although that may just be because he has someone to talk shop with now. But you don’t need to do anything. The lab is directly below us, so the signal… _thing_ will filter right on in here. Just sit there and soak in the primordial aura or whatever the hell Victor said.”

“Sit here?” Clark repeats in alarm. “For how long?”

Bruce shrugs, tugging the tie from his throat. Clark hurriedly looks down at his hands.

“An hour or so? I told Caroline you were doing a piece on me, so we can order take out, if you want?”

Bruce sounds so reasonable and calm that Clark almost agrees, even as every single alarm bell is going off inside his head. Sitting alone in a room with Bruce Wayne for an hour is a bad idea, even without the false memories clattering around inside his head. His heart is pounding, and all Bruce has done is loosen his tie. He is far too old to be having a crush. _Just a crush? You know exactly what feeling this is_ , sneers the other Superman in his head. Panic sends Clark shooting up out of the sofa, knocking over an annoyingly trendy black chair in his haste to retreat before every urge buzzing through his veins starts sounding like a viable option. Before he deludes himself into thinking it is ok to touch.

“I can wait in the lab with Victor,” he says firmly, never mind that in this world Clark had never even met Victor Stone outside of a battlefield.

“Woah, hold your horses, Smallville.” Bruce hurries around the desk, trying to intercept Clark blindly heading towards the window and just flying straight out. He doesn’t even care about the risk of being seen. Hysteria is creeping over him, urging him to get out, flee before he just let’s himself turn and bite down on Bruce’s collarbone until he bleeds all over that immaculately cut waistcoat. “I know I’m not the best company, but I figured you’d be harder to spook.”

Strong, worn fingers only brush against his elbow, a featherlight touch, but it sends electric shocks through Clark’s skin like he’d touched a live wire.

Between one blink and the next, he has Bruce Wayne pinned to his desk, waist bending over the hard edge, muscled thighs pressing against his. He feels the delicate bones of Bruce’s wrist shift against his fingers, the warm curve of his waist against his palm. The room spins, memories clamouring to the surface. This is the first time, the only time, he’s touched Bruce, but it’s not, it’s not, it’s easy, familiar, to lean down slow, watch the way Bruce’s eyes blow wide and hear the hitch in his breath loud as a whip crack.

“Alright, Smallville, not exactly the play I was expecting right now,” Bruce says tightly, a threat lurking behind those civil tones. “If I’ve overstepped you are more than welcome to set me to rights. Verbally, if at all possible.”

A calloused hand curls around his shoulder, forearm pressing against his collarbone, trying to leverage him away. He wonders how well the move might work on an ordinary man, how easily Bruce must know what to do to hurt someone. He’d like to see that someday – he hadn’t had the personal privilege to see Batman at work for some time, only the clean-up, but the chaos had always spoken of methodical brutal violence. Clark brushes his lips against the thin skin at the base of Bruce’s throat, and smiles when the shudder runs through him. Just like always.

“Smallvile… _Kent_ , I’m going to need you to let me up, because if you don’t do so immediately, you will _not_ like the consequences.” The threat is a growl, a promise, something Clark vaguely remembers he always believes as he drags his teeth against the corded muscle of Bruce’s neck.

“Are you threatening me, Wayne?” Clark says mildly as he laces their fingers together, contemplating the tanned throat and exposed skin beneath his unbuttoned shirt, where best to suck marks into Bruce’s skin. He notes a hitch in breath, the sharp acid smell of panic that rolls off Bruce, crashing over him like a wave. He frowns, confused at the reaction, but the buzzing in his head grows louder, stronger.

“Still with us, Clark?” Bruce says, a low thread of urgency in his voice. He shifts, wriggling in Clark’s unrelenting grip, but the friction still makes Clark shudder, backing away before desire gets the better of him. “Remember why we came here in the first place? The Mother Box can–”

The buzzing grows louder, a hundred voices pressing into his skull, an urge that calls to him, sings from all around him and pulling him down to the fractured heart under his hands, calling him to rip it free. His head burns, splitting open, too loud with a mess of words, urging him to… he doesn’t even know, can’t make sense of the words hissing at him from across the darkness of space.

A hand curls around his neck, the drag of calloused fingers against his skin that tear at him like knives. “Clark.” His name, his other name, the one _they_ gave to him when he is so much more that – Clark squeezes his eyes shut as the cacophony reaches a peak, focusing on that hand, the steadying voice of Bruce Wayne murmuring his name like a prayer. It is only right, after all, that he prays to his God, to Clark, the only one able to deliver to Bruce absolution.

“I think I’m losing my mind, Bruce,” Clark whispers, hears the uptick of the heart below him, then gasps as the hand loosens its grip on his neck to cup his cheek, so tender and soft. Like absolution, and maybe Clark is the one who needs to pray.

“I can see that, Smallville.” Bruce’s voice is wry, but his thumb gets a reassuring swipe against his cheek. Clark sinks into that hand, wants to melt into him until he no longer feels out of place. “I need you to try and hold it together, ok… Clark? Because I wasn’t joking about you not liking the consequences – Victor wasn’t shy when I let him go nuts with the security measures.”

“I remember breaking you open and watching you bleed out in my arms,” Clark admits just to feel Bruce stiffen below him, the sharp inhale that sounds like a scream. He’s broken, he’s so goddamn broken, and all he can think is that at least his dad wasn’t around to see him fall. Both his dads.

“We’re… we’re working on that issue, remember?” Bruce’s hands flex against Clark’s skin, warm and rough, and he wonders how it feels to Bruce, if he’s comparing it to all the human flesh he’d touched in the past. _Whore_. The buzzing gets louder. “I know it may not seem like much, but that signal being beamed into you head is going to stop really soon. You just need to get through this, Clark. You need to trust us on this one, so please don’t go and… ‘ _break_ me open’ before we get you fixed, or Alfred will have to discover a way to give me an ‘I Told You Master Wayne’ in the afterlife.”

The words sound right, Clark thinks, but the sound seems to be coming from a long way off, tinny and muffled, like a radio underwater. Bruce is joking; he always liked when Bruce joked, how the rough edges seem to bleed away from Bruce and a strange awkwardness slides into its place. He stops being so untouchable.

“Your jokes are terrible,” Clark tells him, nuzzling into the hand still cupping his cheek. “I always wondered whether it was Dick’s influence, or if it simply came out in full when you had Damian. That boy was always so easy to tease, a little too much like his father, I think.”

The fingers on his face spasm, blunt human nails scratching over his skin. He always wondered if he should give Bruce one of the kryptonian pills just to see how the increased strength would feel, if Bruce’s touches could actually hurt him. A possibility he’d have to discuss with Cyborg and Raven tomorrow, after the inauguration ceremony in Kuala Lumpa. He twists his head, slipping the thumb resting on his cheek into his mouth to nip lightly at the pad, sliding his tongue over the soft fleshy base until Bruce shivers. The thumb slips from his mouth, but a sharp tap against his lips forces his eyes open. It’s difficult, his eyelids lead weight, urging him to sleep, to sink down until the blissful darkness.

“You’re drifting again, Smallville,” Bruce’s voice is sharp, pushing Clark into wakefulness.

He blinks down at Bruce, the strange panic on his face, the odd feeling that something is wrong, but all he can see it the way Bruce’s waistcoat had ridden up to expose the trim line of his waist, the white dress shirt crumpling under Clark’s fingers as he holds Bruce steady against the table.

“I need you to keep it together, Small- Clark,” Bruce’s voice is soft, urgent, weaving through the buzzing in Clark’s head. He nods obediently, because Bruce is always right, and Clark wants to be reliable, wants Bruce to look at him and be reassured. He would always have Batman’s back. “You losing to the signal, so I need you to focus. If you want to tell me about the Dick you know, we can do that. Or you can tell me about this Damian person, if you like. You could let me up and we can chat, have some good food, or maybe see how much of my expensive wine you can demolish before it takes effect?”

The white dress shirt tears like tissue paper, the buttons on the expensive silk waistcoat pinging off the bookcase as Clark flicks the shredded fabric away, pressing his hand greedily on the warm expanse of tanned skin, tracing over each scar and burn like a roadmap.

“Shit,” Bruce hisses as Clark tugs his wrist off the table to mouth at each fingertip, presses Bruce’s hand to his chest, urging him to tug off Clark’s stuffy old flannel shirt. Bruce’s hand doesn’t move, eyes wide, face tight with panic. Clark frowns at that, dipping to press a kiss against plush lips. When the mouth beneath his tightens, he tucks his thumb into the soft skin under his chin, presses until Bruce gasps with pain and he can lick his way into that sinfully hot mouth. The kiss is rough, too one-sided, but that is ok, that is familiar too, and Clark doesn’t mind if Bruce wants him to take rather than freely give himself over. Bruce never really knew how to let himself go, but Clark knew how to take him apart and give him what he needed. Diana may have known it too, but Bruce was only ever so stubborn for him alone.

“Clark, wait,” Bruce hisses, but Clark doesn’t listen, slides his leg between those powerful thighs, grinds slow until sweat beads in the hollow of Bruce’s throat. He licks the salt from his skin, tears the rest of the expensive suit from Bruce’s arms just to revel in the look of outrage he receives. “Ok, ok, if you want to wait it out like this while Victor works, I can help. Not how I imagined our first… well, not how I imagined, but even so, you _really_ need to let me up right now, Clark.”

“So stubborn,” he tells Bruce fondly, tugging him up so he can lay out fully on the desk. Bruce’s mouth presses into an unimpressed line, but Clark steps closer, hears the rough scrape of his jeans against the wool of Bruce’s pants. He smiles as he presses his thigh against the growing bulge tenting the sleek lines of Bruce’s suit, grinding his hips slowly until red flushes across Bruce’s skin and his eyes go unfocused, wet mouth dropping open.

“I need- I need you to _focus_ , Clark, or otherwise this isn’t happening,” Bruce tries to warn, but his face is so flushed, pink tongue coming out to wet his lips, that Clark pays it no mind, running his hand over the divot of each rib before scratching his nail over a brown nipple, smiling in victory when Bruce snarls a rough curse.

“Shall I take you apart slowly this time? It’s been so long since I’ve had you beg for it,” Clark croons, and the heat vanishes from Bruce’s eyes, widening in alarm. “You shook so prettily last time when I got on my knees. Or perhaps I can see how many times I can make you come before you pass out. Or there’s always the toys Brainiac left. They were such fun, weren’t they? Trapped inside your own head, my pretty little slave who obeyed my every command without thought. I could have fucked you right in front of Kara, split you open on my cock right up against that glass and you wouldn’t have said a word.”

He taps a finger against the centre of Bruce’s chest, right over his heart, head swimming with images and remembered heat, watches the way Bruce’s muscle tense as his face whitens, fear flashing through his pretty hazel eyes when Clark rests his hand right there, right over his too loud heart. Memories push against his eyes, wet heat and the sweet crunch of bone, the acrid smell of melted plastic and seared flesh as the sirens wailed and Batman yelling for him to stop, to listen to him, how lovely Bruce had looked wrapped in chains, Diana dragging him forward by his throat and beckoning Clark to follow them into her chambers. Bruce promising him it would be alright, and his hollow apologies when he lied, when he didn’t even _save_ them, and Clark is left with nothing to even bury. Clark thinks about snapping Damian’s neck, just so Bruce can know his pain, remember what it means to lose a son before he presses his thumbs into those dark eyes and cracks Bruce’s head open with a wet crunch.

“I don’t think you deserve gentle,” Clark says thoughtfully.

“Think, Clark,” Bruce snarls, feet kicking at his legs, hands tearing at his arms, his face. “Think, for god’s sake, this isn’t you.”

Something tugs at the back of his mind, pulling the hazy film from his eyes, and Bruce looks terrified, eyes wide, so vulnerable and breakable, just like that night at the docks, kryptonite spear falling from his hands as he stumbled away from Clark on unsteady legs. He was so very breakable. Clark knew that, he remembers that. He treasures that. Bruce needed him too, needed someone to watch his back, and the Robins could never give what _he_ could, could never really offer what Clark alone can give him. A partner, a confidante, the only one that can keep him from spiralling down, keep him _good_. The only one that kept _Clark_ good.

He leans down, pressing a gentle kiss right over Bruce’s heart, slides his fingers into the grooves of his ribs and presses until Bruce shouts in pain. He stills warily, silent and still as Clark drops an apologetic kiss to his chest.

“Rough today, my love?” He leans back, a steady humming in his mind drowning everything else out until only one word remains, pounding inside his skull like a drumbeat. “Yes, I think so. You need a reminder of who you belong to, don’t you?”

_Mine_.

He knows what Bruce needs, what he deserves, when all Clark has tried to do was give him a perfect world. Betraying him over and over.

Clark’s hands tighten, considers whether to shatter Bruce’s ribs or femur this time.

There’s a quicksilver flicker in hazel eyes before Bruce smiles, reaching for him without a trace of the previous fear. Hands cup his cheeks and Clark relaxes into the gentle hold despite the buzzing that hisses ‘ _Betrayal!_ ’ in his head, helplessly greedy for this rare display of affection. Bruce leans up to press a kiss to his lips, and Clark’s head swims with thoughts of crushing Bruce’s skull.

“You’re going to regret this when you wake up,” Bruce says, but the threat has no meaning, too melancholy to hold any real weight. His eyes are sad, a strange guilt swirling in their dark depths that Clark could drown in. “But if you wanna play, I can accommodate you.”

Something tugs at his head again, a hint of wrongness, but Bruce is smiling, warm and open and sprawled across his mahogany table like an offering, like salvation, and who is Clark to try and resist such a sinful temptation? He sinks to his knees between muscled thighs, mouths at the tented fabric until his saliva soaks the expensive fabric and Bruce is shuddering beneath him, forcing him to dig his fingers in hard to hold Bruce’s hips down before he can wriggle away. He’ll have perfect five-point star bruises soon enough – he always bruised so easily.

The hum in his head gets louder. The room spins.

A foot hooks around his neck, disrupting the whining hum. “C’mon Clark,” Bruce hisses, tongue flickering out to run against his lower lip, a teasing drag that leaves his lips shining, leaves Clark burning. “Show me who I belong to.”

The hum drowns all thought out except one.

_Mine._

Clark smiles and bends his head, hooking a thumb in the belt loop of Bruce’s expensive tailored pants to tug them down, sucking a kiss into the sharp blade of Bruce’s hip.

_Mine._

Darkseid smiles as the world burns inside his head, a hundred possible worlds all crumbling in blood and smoke, and Bruce standing tall, stubborn tilt to his jaw as he watches Clark fall at his hands, as it’s him instead who dies in Clark’s arms with curses on his lips and promises so sweet Clark believes them every time.

Pulling Bruce’s hips over the edge of the table, Clark tugs down Bruce’s pants, nipping at the crease where thigh meets arse before licking a strip across Bruce’s entrance, flicking his tongue against the tight ring of muscle to the musical sounds of Bruce’s moans.

_A perfect world_ , Darkseid croons, the Mother Box calling, beckoning him closer, only a single layer of fragile building and one robot teenager standing in his way. Clark pauses, pulling away from Bruce’s entrance with a wet pop to cock his head to the side, listening to the whispers urging him to find Mother, find his master and bring beautiful burning salvation on the earth. He can have everything afterwards, can take whatever he needs once he delivers this world to Him. _You have work to do, boy,_ Darkseid drawls. Clark blinks and draws away, means to follow that siren call to Mother, to Him, but Bruce is too quick, there to drag him back with a strangely worried little smile as he slips his fingers inside himself, holds his entrance open so Clark can _see._ Bruce is all Clark can see. The Box can wait.

Bruce shudders, throwing his head back as Clark drags his cock against his fingers before sinking into him with a sigh. Bruce breaks apart at his touch just like always, every carefully constructed wall coming down for him, for Clark alone, an inescapable bond. The sight of Bruce panting, eyes burning with heat as he bites stinging kisses along Clark’s jaw, the curve of his spine when Clark picks him up by his thighs to hit that sweet spot that has Bruce shouting – it’s familiar, it’s a scene played out across a thousand dreams, world upon world of pain and loss and wonderful perfect possibilities.

A lie, a beautiful lie, but Bruce drags him close, pants into his ears promises that he believes, and Clark vaguely remembers it’s just a lie, memories of a world that never was, a Batman that had never been, and a life he could never have.

“We’ll make this right, Clark,” Bruce pants against his skin, wrapping arms around his neck to drag him down. “We’ll help you, whatever the cost.”

Clark closes his eyes, tells himself it was a lie, all a beautiful, perfect, impossible lie. Bruce kisses him, and in his head there’s a whisper of love that swears to never leave him. It was just a dream, a beautiful lie. The refrain echoes, screams, inside his head, dragging him away from the body shuddering beneath him.

Across the worlds, across the dreams, Clark lets himself believe the promises Bruce gives him even as he falls to darkness, falling further away from the dreams of heroes and goodness that had driven him in the first place.

He opens his eyes, cupping Bruce’s face in his hands. He can see eternity reflected there, a life already lived that no one else remembers, a thousand possibilities spiralling away. _It could be yours again_ , Darkseid whispers, voice faint.

That final dream has Bruce crumpling under him, eyes wide and wet as Clark carefully drags a fingernail over Bruce’s skin and watches it split like ripened fruit. The wires wriggle into Bruce’s soft flesh, cracks into bone to get to the soft brain tissue beyond, Brainiac’s wires stripping away every traitorous thought from him. Watches awareness fade from Bruce’s eyes forever and the unearthly light glow in Clark’s control burn in them instead, whispers love into the ear of the lifeless shell that remains. His beautiful, perfect puppet. Kara calls him a monster, but Diana smiles so sweetly when Bruce doesn’t flinch at all as Clark carves his symbol into Bruce’s flesh, right over his treacherous heart. Diana laps at the blood pooling on Bruce’s chest and presses slick red kisses against Clark’s mouth as he fucks into Bruce’s pliant body.

_A perfect future_ , Darkseid whispers in his head, a peaceful world lying at Clark’s feet and the Regime at his side to ensure that peace. Bruce’s batarang slicing through the delicate membrane of Harley’s exposed flesh, pulling skin from muscles like sheets of wet paper, then curling around him without a word, eyes blank and obedient and _his_.

He wants it, wants it so badly it hurts. Whispers urge him forward as Clark winds his fingers around Bruce’s throat and leans down even as he drives his cock into the tight heat of Bruce’s body, pushes until the delicate windpipe begins to give way and Bruce’s clever hazel eyes darken with fear.

There’s a sharp thunderbolt crack, the smell of ozone filling the air as the windows rattle. A monitor on Bruce’s desk pings.

The buzzing in Clark’s head abruptly stops.

The press of memories vanishes, the whispers quieting with a snap, leaving a gaping void and a yawning silence that stretches across galaxies. Clark sways, lost in the sudden emptiness.

A hand touches his chest, pressing gently over his heart.

Clark gasps, staring dizzily at Bruce’s solemn face, the fear and weary pain already disappearing behind a protective wall of empty bravado. He jerks his hand away from Bruce’s throat. A perfect purple-red handprint remains, blood rapidly darkening under the skin. Bile rises in his throat at the sight, his hands burning.

He tries to pull away only for Bruce to hook an arm around his neck with a snarl.

“Finish what you started, Smallville,” Bruce croaks, growls, and Clark trembles with a broken moan.

“I’m sor-”

“Don’t you dare apologise.” Bruce sits up with a hiss, thighs flexing as he plants his hands against the table and drives his hips upwards, Clark sinking back into Bruce’s wet heat with a howl. “Not until you make me cum all over this desk. I need it after all that. Need you.”

Clark chokes, grabs for Bruce’s arms and shoves them against the desk. Bruce smirks, obediently crossing his wrists above his head and Clark moans again, presses his hand over Bruce’s wrists and tugs them closer to Bruce’s head just to see the delicious curve of his spine at the new angle.

“I don’t even know which is the real you,” Clark says desperately, pulling back until the head of his cock almost slips free before driving back in, Bruce’s inner walls clamping down like a silken vice. “If any of my memories really happened or if it was all-”

“ _Clark_ ,” Bruce snarls, but whatever he means to say is lost in his shout, body going taut as his orgasm shudders through him, head thrown back. Clark tips forward as pleasure crashes down on him, sinking his teeth into the darkening bruise of his handprint on Bruce’s throat. The bitter salt of Bruce’s sweat mixes with a slight metallic tang of blood. Clark draws back with a sigh at the taste of Bruce on his tongue.

Bruce’s mouth hangs open as he pants, eyes still closed. Clark shudders, helplessly sinking down until his forehead rests against Bruce, their breaths mingling. Without the buzzing, without Darkseid’s voice, the yawning vacuum inside him hungrily reaches for the familiar, for _Bruce_. A thousand different Bruce Wayne’s look at him across a thousand different worlds, wide eyed and so terribly lost and Clark decides every time that he will save this man, even if it’s just from himself. Memories presses against his eyelids, directionless without Darkseid to guide them, every loss, every moment of pain and snatches of bright happiness clawing at Clark’s skin.

“Don’t leave me,” he whispers, Lois and Jon’s empty coffins disappearing in dirt behind his eyes, Diana’s soft smile as she tugs him close, Bruce’s steadying hand telling him it wasn’t too late to turn back, the League trading grins, standing together as the alien ships descend. “Don’t leave me, Bruce.”

It was a lie, that love was all just a lie, but no matter how many times Clark says it, no matter how many times he begs, he whispers that name, it doesn’t feel any more real.

“I won’t,” Bruce promises.

Clark breathes, feels the emptiness disappear under the weight of that promise, a steady foundation he could rebuild himself on. Just like the last time Darkseid tried to break him. Across the realities, across the horrors, the deaths, the many failures, in every dream Darkseid gave him, Bruce would always drag him back into himself, keep him steady and grounded, even if it was with his death, his ghost haunting every his every hollow, meaningless waking moment until Clark drives the kryptonite dagger into his own heart and Darkseid pulls him into a new dream.

Across the worlds, Bruce never changed.

Clark breathes in the spicy scent of Bruce’s cologne, sucks his plump bottom lip and tastes the faint bitterness of coffee, drags his hands across the roadmap of scars over Bruce’s heart, and tells himself this world is real. He repeats it, again and again as he tucks his face into the curve of Bruce’s neck, loses himself in the sound of Bruce’s heartbeat, until the refrain almost feels like truth.

Clark lets his eyes slip closed as Bruce’s fingers tangles with his own and lets himself at last be pulled into the quiet darkness of sleep.

For once, he doesn’t dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Clark and Bruce aren't hopelessly tangled up in each other then it's a bad adaptation, I'm sorry I don't make the rules. The mulitverse must have balance, and that is Clark and Bruce giving each other moon eyes in every iteration.
> 
> My tumblr, if anyone wants to potentially yell at me about good ol' Blark.


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